Why not make it a third run for president? That's something that the former Republican nominee is definitely not thinking about right now. To put it in his own recent words: "Oh, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no."

But that didn't stop the Virginia-based bipartisan policy firm Purple Strategies from adding his name to a recent survey for Granite State voters, which shows Romney in the lead with 25 percent support. Libertarian firebrand Rand Paul (who has strong infrastructure in New Hampshire) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are behind with 18 percent and 17 percent support, respectively.

We might be experiencing Mittmentum 3.0. The Netflix documentary about his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns was recently released to the excitement of political insiders everywhere. GOP insiders want him to come back: "You know what a lot of them say to me?" an anonymous "operative" told BuzzFeed. "I think we need Mitt back." Romney was even on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon to slow jam the news.

So are we sure he's not running again? "People are always gracious and say, 'Oh, you should run again,' " he said in an interview earlier this month. "I'm not running again."

He's done this kind of race before. He's got the staff. He's got the loyalty. He has the money. Time has passed.

Is there a chance? "I think that Chris Christie and Paul Ryan and Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, and the list goes on, have a much better chance of doing that," he said in the same interview, "and so I will support one of them as they become the nominee."

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Gee, I wonder if she’s running? Let’s put this another way. If anyone had a 6:1 lead over the closest potential opponent in a future race (with a 61-point lead), and that closest opponent’s name was Joe Biden, who wouldn’t run?

Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a commanding 6 to 1 lead over other Democrats heading into the 2016 presidential campaign, while the Republican field is deeply divided with no clear front-runner, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Clinton trounces her potential primary rivals with 73 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, reinforcing a narrative of inevitability around her nomination if she runs. Vice President Biden is second with 12 percent, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) is third with 8 percent.

Although Clinton’s favorability rating has fallen since she stepped down as secretary of state a year ago, she has broad Democratic support across ideological, gender, ethnic and class lines. Her lead is the largest recorded in an early primary matchup in at least 30 years of Post-ABC polling.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 61-point edge over Joe Biden in new Washington Post-ABC News polling makes her the single biggest frontrunner for a Democratic presidential nomination in the history of the poll, an affirmation of the conventional wisdom that the nomination is hers for the taking.

Yes, well, Hillary fans shouldn’t pop the corks on the bubbly quite yet. First, we’ve seen this movie before, when Hillary had a commanding lead in December 2006 over a first-term Senator named Barack Obama, 39/17. Granted, that wasn’t a sixty-one point lead, but given Hillary’s high profile, her husband’s reputation within the Democratic party, and their superior organization, the 2008 nomination was hers for the taking, too — and yet she still blew it.

Besides, when one looks inside the numbers, the picture isn’t quite as rosy. She has a 58/38 approval rating overall, with 26% strongly unfavorable matched against 32% strongly favorable. The topline among independents is 53/42, but strongly unfavorable outweighs strongly favorable, 28% to 23%. And that’s after a year out of the spotlight, when approval numbers usually rebound, and without getting challenged publicly on Benghazi yet, as well as her mediocre record otherwise at State.

What happens when Hillary has to go on the road and start naming her accomplishments? Former Clinton adviser Lanny Davis couldn’t come up with any examples on the Hugh Hewitt show this week:

HH: All right, one question, you’ve got a minute. Summarize for me what she accomplished as Secretary of State.

LD: Well, the biggest thing of all is goodwill around the world, which is what secretaries of State do.

HH: Like in Syria…

LD: I don’t know what any secretary of State…

HH: …and Egypt and Libya?

LD: I don’t know, well, Libya and certainly the intervention in Libya and getting rid of Qaddafi, you would say that’s a pretty good achievement for the President. But these are presidential achievements with a partnership of the secretary of State. What do secretaries of State do? For example, she was very instrumental in the details of the Iranian sanctions program, which has produced, apparently, some results. I’m very skeptical about this deal in Iran on the nuclear weaponry. But the credit she deserves on this sanctions program, which literally was her program in the State Department to enforce, but in partnership with Barack Obama.

HH: So her achievement is that…

LD: But this doesn’t change the question about the secretary of State having achievement. This is a secretary of State is the most popular woman in the world and restored relations with everyone in the world.

HH: All right, Lanny, we’re out of time, but your achievement is one that’s been swept away by the President.

Er, yeah. American popularity abroad was just surging in those years, huh?

On the Republican side, the WaPo/ABC poll has Paul Ryan topping the field with 20% and Jeb Bush at 18%, in a poll with only one Republican governor mentioned — Chris Christie, who’s dropped to third. (Mike Huckabee isn’t mentioned, either.) That’s basically primary polling noise this far out.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

During remarks that she made for the 15th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the launch of a new program that according to Clinton will now become the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy. This new program is known as the Global Health Initiative, and it is being incredibly well-funded at a time when the U.S. government is drowning in debt. According to Clinton, 63 billion dollars will be spent by the U.S. to prevent pregnancies and to improve "family planning" services around the globe over the next six years. In other words, the new centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy is all about eugenics and population control.

In addition to new funding, we’ve launched a new program that will be the centerpiece of our foreign policy, the Global Health Initiative, which commits us to spending $63 billion over six years to improve global health by investing in efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality, prevent millions of unintended pregnancies, and avert millions of new HIV infections, among other goals. This initiative will employ a new approach to fighting disease and promoting health.

You see, whenever the global elite want to launch another new eugenics operation, they announce it as a great "humanitarian program" that will save millions of lives. But their real goal is to control the population and prevent millions of lives from being born.

This was also reflected in Clinton's remarks about the United Nations Population Fund. The United Nations Population Fund has been promoting abortion, forced sterilization and radical population control measures around the globe for decades, and Hillary Clinton was super excited to talk about how the U.S. government recently renewed funding for that organization....

This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way. (Applause.) The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. That’s the largest allocation in more than a decade – since we last had a Democratic president, I might add. (Applause.)

So what exactly is so bad about the United Nations Population Fund?

Not only does the United Nations Population Fund support and fund the forced abortion and infanticide of China's "one child" program, they also promote abortion, forced sterilization and brutal eugenics programs throughout the developing world.

To learn much more about the United Nations Population Fund, please watch the four short videos below. They will leave you absolutely stunned....

The truth is that the United Nations Population Fund always has been and always will be about eugenics.

And thanks to Barack Obama, it is being funded with millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

But that wasn't enough for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, so they have launched this new Global Health Initiative which will now be the "centerpiece" of U.S. foreign policy.

63 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars will be spent over the next six years to promote abortion, sterilization and "family planning" around the globe.

Sadly enough, there are people who are actually convinced that they will save the environment by reducing the population. They think that while promoting abortion and sterilization may not be the most pleasant thing to do, it must be done for the good of the planet.

Of course they are dead wrong, but the "true believers" do not understand this. All they know is that they have to keep all of the brown and black women in other countries from having babies so that we can save the planet.

We live in a world that is becoming more evil all the time. Every person on this planet has a fundamental right to have as many children as they want, but the truth is that this right is being stripped away from an increasing number of people.

We live at a time when even our most fundamental liberties as human beings are under attack. Let us hope that America wakes up and starts saying "no" to these kinds of policies.

- See more at: http://howtohelpsavetheenvironment.com/archives/hillary-clinton-population-control-will-now-become-the-centerpiece-of-u-s-foreign-policy#sthash.3cCIgvng.dpuf

Friday, January 24, 2014

According to a Fox News poll released late yesterday, American voters place the blame for the 9/11 Benghazi terror attack on President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sixty percent of voters blame Clinton for what happened, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. That includes 28 percent who blame her “a great deal” and another 32 percent who say she deserves “some” blame.

About four Democrats in 10 blames each: 41 percent blame Clinton, and 38 percent blame Obama. Twice as many Republicans blame the former secretary (80 percent) and the president (80 percent).

Among independents, about six in ten think Clinton (62 percent) and Obama (64 percent) are at least somewhat responsible.

When voters were asked about why they thought the Obama administration falsely blamed the attack on a YouTube video, most said it was to protect President Obama politically. At the time of the attack, President Obama was running for re-election against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and repeatedly stated on the campaign trail that al Qaeda, whose terror affiliates carried out the attack, was "on the run."

About half think it was to protect Obama politically (49 percent). The rest split between saying the White House just made a “mistake” (22 percent) and that they did it to protect America (19 percent).

Earlier this week, a Rasmussen Report came up with similar results. Respondents said they believe Benghazi will hurt Clinton should she choose to run for president in 2016 and an overwhelming majority said it is important to find out what happened.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters think the circumstances surrounding the murder of the U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. Embassy employees in Libya will hurt the former secretary of State if she runs for president in 2016.

Just 28% now rate the administration’s explanation of the events surrounding the murder of the ambassador and the others as good or excellent. That’s down nine points from a high of 37% in October. Forty-five percent (45%) give the administration poor marks for the Benghazi matter, the highest level of dissatisfaction to date.

Seventy-eight percent (78%) think it is at least somewhat important to find out exactly what happened in the events surrounding the murder of the four Americans in Libya, with 47% who say it is Very Important.

Nineteen percent (19%) view getting to the bottom of the Benghazi incident as unimportant, but that includes just four percent (4%) who say it’s Not At All Important.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republicans and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major party think it is Very Important to find out what happened in Benghazi, but only 27% of Democrats agree.

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of Clinton infamously declaring during Congressional testimony, "What difference does it make!" when pressed on how and why four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.

Patricia Smith, mother of U.S. Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith who was killed in the Benghazi terror attack, told Fox News' Neil Cavuto yesterday that she is still seeking answers and that Clinton is the person who has them.

Let me explain; we all know Hillary is complicit in the deaths of four Americans by leaving them to burn in Benghazi. AND she has been accused of many other illegal acts, but until now, she has not been held accountable for anything.

Well, Al Capone was a Chicago gangster responsible for smuggling, prostitution, and numerous counts of murder. And Capone, much like Hilary, was never held accountable...until federal authorities finally jailed him on a technicality -- tax evasion.

we have just NAILED Hillary on her own technicality -- multiple Federal Campaign Finance violations.

You see, recent news reports in Time Magazine, Politico and other news outlets have revealed Hillary Clintons behind-the-scenes work with unauthorized Super PACs gearing up for her 2016 presidential campaign -- all in clear violation of federal law.

The short-and-sweet of it -- Hillary Clinton conspiring with this Super PAC run by her longtime political henchmen is a major violation of federal election law.

Furthermore, the fact that her chosen Super PAC has raised in excess of 4 million dollars and has accepted individual contributions as high as $25,000 in excess of the federal limits for a candidate for federal office is ANOTHER clear violation of the law.

Along with this full legal complaint, we're also delivering a thick stack with tens of thousands of signatures on our "Find Hillary Guilty Petition" directly to federal authorities.

We, with your help, are demanding a full investigation.

You have been a part of a massive outpouring of support, and just now, we've been informed we can add/append an additional 100,000 signatures to the complaint, **if we collect them in the next 24 hours.**

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The media have discovered a scandal they can eagerly embrace, and they are off to the races. Having already found him guilty, they are now trying to determine if New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie knew about or ordered his underlings to arrange to create traffic jams entering the George Washington Bridge, from Ft. Lee, New Jersey into New York City; or to threaten to withhold Superstorm Sandy funds from Hoboken, NJ unless the mayor agreed to play ball with a developer with ties to the governor; or if he created a culture whereby all that could happen.

Yet few are asking the parallel questions of Hillary Clinton. While those are all valid questions for Christie, the fact remains that Mrs. Clinton was in charge of the State Department during the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, which the recent SSCI reportdetermined “were likely preventable.” Did she create a culture at the State Department that would allow these attacks to occur? Or is the answer, “What difference at this point does it make?”

One person who is getting blamed in the media is Chris Stevens, the ambassador to Libya at the time, who was murdered by the terrorists when they attacked the Temporary Mission Facility in Benghazi. Sean Smith was another casualty there. Liberals like Piers Morgan and MSNBC’s Katty Kay are among a number of journalists who have basically blamed Stevens for his own death, as did The New York Times, and third-rate comedian Bill Maher, who wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except that Time Warner sees fit to give him a weekly one-hour show on HBO to spew his venomous ignorance on a range of topics.

How was it Ambassador Stevens’ fault that he and the others died? According to the SSCI report, “General Ham called Ambassador Stevens and asked if the Embassy needed the SST [Site Security Team] from the U.S. military, but Stevens told Ham it did not.” And, again, “Shortly thereafter, Stevens traveled to Germany for a previously scheduled meeting with Ham at AFRICOM headquarters. Ham again offered to sustain the SST at the meeting, and Stevens again declined.”

How does this evidence stack up against reports that he had pleaded, repeatedly, for additional security?

Here is what the record shows: The U.S. Mission had been attacked twice earlier in the year. The British and Red Cross had pulled out before the attacks. On July 9, 2012, Stevens sent a cable requesting additional security support, so that the Tripoli Embassy would have 13 security support personnel. The cable mentions Department of Defense SST as a possibility.

On August 16, another cable was sent, to the attention of Hillary Clinton, who claims she never saw it. The cable reportedly said that al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi, and the senior security officer at the U.S. Mission in Benghazi didn’t believe the Mission could be protected or defended against a “coordinated attack.” The State Department had signed a contract with the Blue Mountain Group out of Wales, which provided security of sorts. Unarmed security. The only armed security was supplied by the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, a Libyan militia group of which Greg Hicks, the State Department’s deputy chief of mission in Libya at the time of the attacks, said, “Certainly elements of that militia were complicit in the attacks.”

What changed for Stevens between July and August? The August 16 Emergency Action Committee (EAC) cable that prompted Ham to ask Ambassador Stevens about accepting the SST back remains classified. We now know from the SSCI report that a CIA officer briefed the EAC in August “on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and [Al Qaeda] training camps within Benghazi.”

We also know from former Regional Security Officer in Tripoli Eric Nordstrom that the State Department was opposed to additional military support. “Mr. Nordstrom told the Committee that Ms. [Charlene] Lamb claimed [an extension of the SST] would be embarrassing and give Libya more security agents than in Yemen and Pakistan,” according to the “Additional Views” of six Republican senators on the committee, who issued their own summary as part of the SSCI report. Lamb was the State Department official responsible for managing Diplomatic Security programs designed to protect all of the international missions from terrorism and other threats. Such political considerations should not have outweighed the value of the lives of those in Libya.

So while there is some word-of-mouth testimony that Stevens said no to additional security, wasn’t it up to the State Department higher ups, those who created the culture, to protect their diplomats? There is always the Chief of Mission responsibility for his or her own people, but could State have been applying pressure for Ambassador Stevens not to accept the military support? They certainly applied pressure on Nordstrom.

According to the unified findings of the SSCI, the State Department could have prevented this attack given the “known security shortfalls” and “significant strategic…warnings from the Intelligence Community about the deteriorating security situation in Libya.” But why blame a building? According to the minority view, Hillary Clinton was due a share of the blame: “Ultimately, however, the final responsibility for security at diplomatic facilities lies with the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.”

When will the media start chasing Hillary, and spending hours of prime time television questioning the culture she created at State, and going line by line through what everyone said? No, instead they try to tell us that this is a phony scandal, no one cares about it, and as MSNBC host Chris Hayes said, “it is time to say good-bye, RIP, Benghazi scandal. There is nothing left.”

The new poll, released Tuesday, shows potential 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is backed by 45 percent of likely voters who earn more than $100,000, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie got 43 percent of the same group’s vote.

But Christie edged the former secretary of state 44 to 43 percent among middle-income voters who earn between $50,000 and $100,000, suggesting that the GOP’s strongest support lies in middle-class voters instead of the country-club set.

In contrast, Bush and Paul lost the middle-class vote to Clinton by only two points, according to the poll of registered 813 Republicans and 803 registered Democrats. Cruz lost the middle-class vote by six points.

In a question about overall favorability, Clinton got positive reviews from 53 percent of the wealthiest group, but from only 50 percent of the middle-class group. That three-point class gap doubled when Quinnipiac counted unfavorable ratings — only 40 percent of the upper-class group rated her negatively, while 46 percent of the middle-class group rated her negatively, according to the poll.

The Democrats’ strong support among the wealthy clashes with the established media’s eagerness to portray the GOP as the party of the rich. That image was created before the late 1980s, when Democrats under President Bill Clinton traded their long-standing demand for tax increases to win more votes and donations from the wealthiest Americans.

President Barack Obama used that image to help defeat former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012, with the aid of donations from numerous billionaires, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and investors Warren Buffett and George Soros.

Those donations were rational. During Obama’s tenure, nearly all economic gains have gone to the top one percent, while wages have stagnated for all other Americans.

The GOP’s loss of support among the wealthy has created a funding problem for the GOP, prompting party leaders to zig-zag between the demands of elite donors and populist swing voters. That dynamic is highlighted by the immigration debate, where wealthy donors have allied with progressives to press for an increased inflow of cheap foreign workers, amid strong opposition from worried middle-class, working-class and independent voters.

The wealthiest demographic has been trending leftwards for decades, ever since President John Kennedy first won a narrow majority of professionals in 1960.

The high-income group includes risk-averse executives at companies who are dependent on favorable government regulations, many youthful rich from the post-industrial Internet sector, and many post-grad professionals who trust their fellow university-trained progressive peers to direct the nation’s government, economy and civic life.

Many of the $100,000 voters — but not a majority — also support Democratic control of the Congress.

Forty-three percent of the wealthiest group favor Democratic control of the Senate, while 49 percent favor the GOP. Middle-income voters, however, clearly favor GOP control by 50 percent to 41 percent.

Forty-nine percent of the $100,000-plus group favor GOP control of the House, while 44 percent favor Democratic control.

But another question showed that wealthy GOP voters aren’t as loyal to the local party candidates as are wealthy Democratic voters, or middle-class voters.

The $100,000-plus group split evenly — 40 percent to 40 percent — over whether they would vote for their local Democratic or Republican candidates. That’s a drop-off in support of roughly nine points among GOP voters, but a drop-off of only one to three points among the wealthy Democratic partisans.

Middle-class voters were relatively more willing to pull the lever for their local GOP candidate, by 40 percent to 34 percent.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Expect Sen. Angus King, a Democrat-aligned Senator from Maine, to get a less-than-pleasant phone call from Team Hillary over this remark on CNN. Time to add Sen. King to the enemies list?

"There’s no question the State Department screwed up here," King said. “There should be accountability, in my opinion. Who did make that decision in light of all that information, and why, and I think that’s a very fair question. I’m surprised and disappointed. I know some people have been shifted around, but if accountability means anything, it means somebody paying a price for having made a disastrous decision....I haven’t seen any real accountability, and I think that’s been a failure in this whole process,” he said.

He's plainly correct about the lack of accountability. Several State Department staffers were shuffled around, but no one was fired. Prominent figures who helped mislead the public about the nature of the attacks were promoted. And 16 months after the fact, none of the the terrorists responsible for the killings have been brought to justice -- a quest that's currently "stalled," according to theWashington Post. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State when the Benghazi massacre took place on the highly symbolic anniversary of 9/11. She was informed in real time that the raid was a coordinated terrorist attack, yet allowed the administration to distort that fact for public consumption. Her chief of staff and assistant secretary dressed down and demoted Gregory Hicks for questioning the White House's talking points, and for cooperating with a Congressional investigation. The US' security chief in Libya testified that Clinton "absolutely" would have been aware of repeated requests for an increased security presence in the increasingly perilous city; these requests were ignored and denied. A recent bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report slammed the State Department's actions before and after the deadly raid. The Clinton State Department renewed its lease on its acting consulate in Benghazi just months before Amb. Stevens was assassinated. The lease included an effective waiver, allowing the facility to operate below minimum security standards. This decision was made despite two previous attempted attacks, including a bombing in July of 2012. Meanwhile, Hillary's political team hasstarted fretting that an unhelpful narrative is beginning to take root:

Hugh Hewitt memorably stumped a Politico reporter recently by asking the simple question of what Hillary Clinton has actually accomplished. Not reputational stuff, not miles she's traveled, not name recognition metrics -- tangible accomplishments. As Americans assess Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, they'll remember America's incoherent posture on Syria (which eventually blew upin our faces), a messy, hands-off war in Libya (which blew up in our faces), and massive tumult in Egypt -- during which America appeared to have zero influence. And there was the embarrassing Russian 'reset' gaffe, plus the far more damagingfailed reset itself. There is one major Obama-era accomplishment for which Hillary does deserve considerable credit, however. Obamacare, with all its various betrayals promises, was her plan:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will rail against the idea of a “a bigger, more expensive government” when he delivers his inaugural address on Tuesday.

The Republican governor — who won re-election in November — will be sworn into a second term during a ceremony at noon in Trenton.

In excerpts released by his office ahead of his speech, Christie will make the case for smaller government.

I do not believe that New Jerseyans want a bigger, more expensive government that penalizes success and then gives the pittance left to a few in the name of income equity,” Christie is expected to say. “What New Jerseyans want is an unfettered opportunity to succeed in the way they define success. They want an equal chance at the starting; not a government guaranteed result.”

“We should make sure that government pursues policies that believe in the effort, talent and optimism of New Jerseyans, not in the power of almighty government to fix any problem, real or imagined,” Christie will say.

Here are the excerpts of the speech released by Christie’s office:

“The people of this state know that the only way forward is if we are all willing to take on what is politically unpopular. If we are all willing to share in the sacrifice. If we are all willing to be in this together…

“I do not believe that New Jerseyans want a bigger, more expensive government that penalizes success and then gives the pittance left to a few in the name of income equity. What New Jerseyans want is an unfettered opportunity to succeed in the way they define success. They want an equal chance at the starting; not a government guaranteed result

hy? Because through hard work, and being rewarded for hard work, they know they are part of their own success.

“We should make sure that government pursues policies that believe in the effort, talent and optimism of New Jerseyans, not in the power of almighty government to fix any problem, real or imagined.”

“One of the lessons that I have learned most acutely over the last four years is that New Jersey can really be one state. This election has taught us that the ways we divide each other – by race, by class, by ethnicity, by wealth, by political party is neither permanent nor necessary. Our dreams are the same: a good job, a great education for our children, safe streets in our neighborhood and core values which give our lives real meaning. Those dreams are not unique to any one group in our state.

“And, while government has a role in ensuring the opportunity to accomplish these dreams, we have now learned that we have an even bigger role to play as individual citizens. We have to be willing to play outside the red and blue boxes the media and pundits put us in; we have to be willing to reach out to others who look or speak differently than us; we have to be willing to personally reach out a helping hand to a neighbor suffering from drug addiction, depression or the dignity stripping loss of a job. New Jersey came together as one community when it mattered most and now we must stay together – people of every background and belief – the government and our people – to help our fellow citizens reach their dreams

We will fight to continue to change government so that we value our differences and honor the strength of our diversity. We cannot fall victim to the attitude of Washington, DC. The attitude that says I am always right and you are always wrong. The attitude that puts everyone into a box they are not permitted to leave. The attitude that puts political wins ahead of policy agreements. The belief that compromise is a dirty word. As we saw in December regarding the DREAM Act, we can put the future of our state ahead of the partisans who would rather demonize than compromise. As your Governor, I will always be willing to listen, as long as that listening ends in decisive action for the people counting on us.”

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Well before Fox News’ James Rosen reported on Tuesday that transcripts recently declassified proved top officials in the Obama administration knew within “minutes” the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, Gregory Hicks -- the number two deputy on the ground in Libya that night -- and former CIA Director David Petraeus had already testified to that effect under oath. So it was clear, then, from the very beginning, that within the highest echelons of our government, officials knew from the start that the United States of America had been deliberately and maliciously attacked by terrorists on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11.

Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation's top civilian and uniformed defense officials -- headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama -- were informed that the event was a "terrorist attack," declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president's Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.

Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing -- in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing -- occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.

According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham -- who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 -- said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center.

"My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey's office, to say, 'Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,'" Ham told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation on June 26 of last year. "I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta."

Rep Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), Rosen reports, a former military veteran, pressed Ham in sworn testimony to explain the nature of the conversation he had with Dempsey and Panetta after he was briefed on the attack. Did he mislead them in any way, or somehow suggest that the attack was the result of an impromptu demonstration? No, he testified:

WENSTRUP: "As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack."

HAM: "Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack."

WENSTRUP: "And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?"

HAM: "Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir."

Panetta, of course, then informed the president:

Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of last year that it was him who informed the president that "there was an apparent attack going on in Benghazi." "Secretary Panetta, do you believe that unequivocally at that time we knew that this was a terrorist attack?" asked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. "There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack," Panetta replied.

So why did Secretary Panetta stand idly by and allow the administration to disseminate false talking points for so long? We don't know. His office did not respond to Rosen’s request for comment. But in any case, reading through the report, this is what's most important:

Ham's declassified testimony further underscores that Obama's earliest briefing on Benghazi was solely to the effect that the incident was a terrorist attack, and raises once again the question of how the narrative about the offensive video, and a demonstration that never occurred, took root within the White House as the explanation for Benghazi.

"Solely." Question: Why, then, did we hear in the days and weeks after the attack that the death of four Americans was the result of demonstration gone awry, when the administration obviously knew that to be false? Again, we just don’t know.

Monday, January 13, 2014

This article in Politico is so obnoxiously obtuse that you wonder if author Alexander Burns has lived in a cave for the last two decades.

“The GOP’s Tarnished Golden Boys” projects a self-satisfied air of smugness at the problems of Christie and former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell that you see a lot from liberal pundits these days:

The first major Republicans elected after the 2008 Obama landslide, the tough-as-nails Garden Stater and the straight-edged Virginian heralded the conservative resurgence in 2010 and pointed the way toward sweeping victories for small-government candidates on the state level. A year ago, both seemed like plausible and even probable 2016 presidential candidates, two representatives of a fresher GOP, anchored in fiscal discipline, support for states’ rights and opposition to public labor.

Now, clouds hang over both the GOP golden boys of 2009. McDonnell’s situation is far graver: as he leaves office this weekend, the governor’s Boy Scout-image is in tatters amid an ongoing criminal investigation of huge, undisclosed gifts that his family accepted from a political contributor.

Christie, meanwhile, saw the start of his second term engulfed this week in a different kind of investigation: a legislative inquiry, and a just-opened federal probe, into several of his aides meddling with traffic patterns in Northern New Jersey as an apparent act of political retaliation.

The near-simultaneous humbling of both men marks an important checkpoint in the history of the post-George W. Bush Republican Party, as a first set of next-generation conservatives begins to run up against the consequences of their own errors. Much as second-term presidents – not least of all Barack Obama – often struggle with the fallout from their first-term decisions, a new round of GOP state executives has only begun to confront messy realities of their own making.

Republicans emphasize that the two governors’ predicaments are not equivalent. McDonnell could face a federal indictment after the end of the single term Virginia governors are allowed. Christie, on the other hand, has totally denied any personal wrongdoing; no evidence has surfaced tying him directly to unlawful acts of retribution.
Yet this week, the two men adopted comparable poses of self-abasement, speaking to their constituents in tones of remorse at dramatic odds with the chest-thumping triumphalism that was a shared hallmark of both men during political appearances over the last four years. On the contrary, the two governors meditated together on the imperfections of humankind.

“Chest-thumping triumphalism”? Whew! Must have missed that these last four years. Imagine that — a winning politician who scores important legislative victories acting triumphantly. Never happened before in the history of the republic.

Burns’ “important checkpoint” in the post-Bush history of the GOP (all of five years) is a load of crap — as is his ridiculous notion that Bob McDonnell especially was some kind of “golden boy.” If McDonnell had designs on the presidency, they were certainly short-lived. He became embroiled in scandal almost before the Bible he used for his swearing in got cold.

And Christie? He’s about as far from fitting the image of a “golden boy” that you can get and still be in the continental United States. Trying to feminize Christie this way is perhaps more revealing of Burns’ fear that the left hasn’t hit the governor quite hard enough and that it’s still possible for him to come all the way back.

He needn’t fret so. Christie has enormous problems within the Republican Party and despite leading the race in its infancy, the governor has a rickety road to winning the nomination. Could he win a primary against a strong conservative anywhere below Mason-Dixon? It’s clear that some aspects of Christie’s personae and record simply won’t travel well out of the Northeast, and anointing him the nominee is wishful thinking by the left.

But Christie and McDonnell are pikers in the scandal department when compared to the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton.

No “Golden Girl” is she. I’m sure that most of the gloaters on the left who are enjoying the governor’s fall aren’t thinking about the oppo research book being compiled by the Republicans who will remind a feckless voting public what it was like when Mrs. Clinton was in the White House two decades ago.

The list reads like an AM radio golden oldies countdown: Travelgate, the magical and mysterious Rose Law Firm billing records that showed up in a closet in the White House years after being subpoenaed, Whitewater, Bimbogate, and the vast right-wing conspiracy that unzipped her husband’s pants and forced him to have oral sex with Monica Lewinsky.

Perhaps they think more recent history will also be swept under the rug. Refusing to send additional security to a diplomatic mission that was later attacked resulting in the deaths of four Americans, including the ambassador, might be viewed differently by the American people when it comes time for the voters to pass judgment at the ballot box. The 60 Minutes story has nothing to do with Clinton’s poor judgment regarding security at the mission, nor her obvious efforts to deflect blame for it from her office afterwards.

Christie may recover enough to run for president — as long as no evidence surfaces connecting him directly to the order to close the bridge lanes. But even without the scandal, he faced long odds to win the nomination.

On the other hand, the Democrats have the most scandal-plagued candidate in recent history as their frontrunner. Liberals may not care about Hillary’s problems, but the American people may. The point being, just what is it the left is celebrating about the Christie bridge scandal?
Those who live in glass houses